Monday, August 08, 2011

Beam Weapons

"In a previous article we discussed the use of relativistic kill weapons: impactors travelling at almost the speed of light delivering enormous amounts of kinetic energy to demolish their targets. But why go with a weapon that travels at almost the speed of light when you can use light itself as a weapon? Then the enemy will have no warning at all.

The United States has been developing laser weapons for years but current systems still require several seconds of target-lock before the thermal effects kick in. In a future warfare scenario we’re not so limited: let’s consider stellar-class beam weapons."